The Harry Potter series started as a pretty good kids movie about magic and ended as a series of excuses to throw water at Emma Watson and look at her all wet, but then it all ended and since then Hollywood has been looking for The Next Harry Potter.
Twilight was marginally too grown up, what with all the pregnancy and threesomes and what have you, and the Box Office failure of Mortal Instruments suggests it probably won't be stepping up to take over the throne either. Warner Bros. knows there's only one way to realise the next Harry Potter... just do that.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them was originally a fictional text book mentioned in Philosopher's Stone (Or Sorcerer's Stone if you're American and find the idea of Philosophy difficult to grasp but are perfectly comfortable with sorcery.) and then in 2001 J.K Rowling made it a reality by writing it for Comic Relief.
The book, whose in-world author is Newt Scamander, is required reading for all first year students at Hogwarts, and the movie will follow the writer's adventures as he compiles the text. There's no Harry Potter in this, because the tale takes place 70 years before Harry is born, but the Universe in which Potter and Co live is very much the stage on which Fantastic Beasts will be set.
Newt isn't just some dick with a silly name they made up for a film either. He's got ties with the current book series because his grandson, Rolf, is a classmate of Harry's and eventually winds up married to blonde Irish headcase Luna Lovegood.
What's more, J.K Rowling herself will make her screenwriting debut with the film, penning the original story of Newt and his travels. She was a creative consultant on the previous franchise, but never actually turned in a script. This is good news for Potter fans because they can at least expect a faithful story rather than a cynical cash-in, and good news for Rowling because her non-Potter based books haven't exactly set the world on fire.
Not that she ever needs to write a single word ever again in her entire life, but she seems to enjoy it. I can imagine her now, sweeping the bundles of money off her desk, which is made of money, to make room for laptop so she can start her very first script.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them won't be coming out for bloody ages, but we'll keep you posted for when they cast someone as Newt Scamander and you can all go mental about it like you did with Ben Affleck as Batman.
Words by Gazz Wood
